The rant-filled, anti-reform rallies leading up to the nation's historic health care bill should put a new variation on an old and unpleasant inner prayer.

Pam Adams

Let me give you the scoop on something many white people might not know about many black people.

Whenever a particularly egregious crime makes the news, or an insanely stupid remark, or an outrageously ridiculous mistake ... well, when this stuff hits the news, many blacks have been known to shudder, cringe and silently repeat a six-word prayer. "Please don't let him be black. Please don't let him be black."

It's a throwback reaction to the days when a really smart, really clean, really patriotic, articulate black person was considered the exception, but a really dumb, really criminal black person represented the entire race. At least, that's the way many black people thought many white people saw things.

Comedians like Steve Harvey and sitcoms like "The Game" (in regular reruns on BET) have used the familiarity of the phrase - and the feeling - for laughs. Social scientists put the "please-don't-let-him-be" fear under the broad category of a phenomenon common to disadvantaged, marginalized groups - internalized oppression, which is to accept, or internalize, the broad myths, anxieties, stereotypes, degradations and injustices that accompany racism.

And what are some white people likely to think when a particularly egregious crime or an insanely stupid remark or an outrageously ridiculous mistake makes news?

Is it "Please don't let him be white"? Is it "Betcha he's black"?

This is the 21st century. Nothing is black and white.

The rant-filled, anti-reform rallies leading up to the nation's historic health care bill should put a new variation on an old and unpleasant inner prayer.

Over the weekend, when protesters outside the Capitol allegedly spit on one black congressman and shouted racial slurs at two others, including civil rights icon John Lewis, does anybody cringe, "Please don't let them be Tea Partiers"?

When other protesters sneered other slurs at openly gay Congressman Barney Frank, does anybody shudder, "Please don't let them be conservative Republicans"?

Are Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck-ers, Rush Limbaugh-ers, conservative Republicans and the assorted groups that make up the most vociferous voices against overhauling health care embarrassed by the video making the rounds on YouTube of two men berating another man with Parkinson's disease as demonstrators, pro and con, rally outside a congresswoman's office in Columbus, Ohio?

"If you're looking for a handout, you're in the wrong end of town. Nothing free, over here you have to work for everything you get," one anti-reformer told the man who quietly sat on the ground, holding a handmade sign that read, "Got Parkinson's? I do. You might."

Leaders in the anti-reform movement dutifully took to the airwaves to disown the hate as the work of a few, isolated idiots. These isolated incidents by idiots are becoming all too common and devoid of the shame and embarrassment that should prompt strong calls for them to end.

Apparently, whiteness means never having to be embarrassed by the crazy, stupid things other white people do. It's much bigger. The crazy, stupid things these white people did are embarrassing for the country.

Turns out the man with Parkinson's is Robert Letcher, a former nuclear scientist with a doctorate from Cornell University, who was in the pro-reform camp of the rally.